Working Toward a Healthier Me (Also I Made Sushi Today)

I recently got a membership to the YMCA. I'm not in college anymore and I need to lose the weight I've put on over the last five years. To be honest I actually gained most if it this last school year. I only had a couple classes and didn't really go out much. I also drank a lot more often because I lived off campus.

I'm an adult and it's summer time so changes had to happen. My roommate Chris got a YMCA membership too. Josh is in the process of quitting his second job which will leave his mornings open which means he has to get a membership too. Then we can all go work out together and get super healthy and in shape. Okay, I'm not really expecting us to all get super healthy and in shape but every little bit counts and every little bit helps.

I made myself a promise that if I drink I have to do a full hour on the elliptical the next time I work out. I had a few drinks with my friends on Wednesday night which mean today I had to do a full hour. Which I did. I'm so proud of myself. Actually I just wanted to see the end of "What Not to Wear." I caught it at the beginning of the episode and made myself see it out.

5 miles on the elliptical took me just over an hour
(it stared the cool down phase so it only says 13 seconds).

 Chris and I got home from the YMCA and made sushi because I've been craving it lately. It's just so fun and easy to make. It also gives me an excuse to eat a lot of avocados. I bought some seafood snackers to cut up and put in them. Raw fish scares me so I try to find alternatives to put in them. Josh doesn't like it if it's just vegetables. Walmart was out of cucumbers so most of them are just avocado, carrot, and seafood snackers. I also put some cream cheese in some of them with the seafood snackers. Best decision ever. But that might be because cream cheese is magical.

Sushi!! Chris and I made sushi as a reward for our workout. The blue plate is the ones I made for Josh.

Curtains

Today is my first Monday as a graduate. That's right. I finally manged to graduate from college. It took five years but I managed it. I now have a degree in Creative Writing. Yay! It's now summer and that means it's time for summer projects. It's nice to do things without feeling guilty about avoiding homework. This also means there should be a lot more blog posts.

Curtains!! So these are some curtains I made a while back. I'm pretty proud of them. It was just some cheap fabric I found, hemmed the edges and made a tube along the top  for my tension rod that is actually meant for shower curtains. It works pretty well if we can get it wedged in the window properly (that's why it's crooked).

But now that it's summer it's also time for the box fans to be a permanent fixture in our living room window, which doesn't work well with curtains. I had an easy solution. I would just cut a panel that would allow me to flip up the part that would normally be in front of the fan.

I also bought some sheer white fabric to put behind the curtain to allow the light in but to keep people from looking into our apartment (the window sits at ground level right next to the front door of the building). I doubled it over and used some sticky backed velcro attached to the fabric and the window frame.

Seaweed Anyone?

I found these in the Asian section at Walmart last week. The first one just reminded me of the seaweed I use for sushi. But the more sheets I ate the better they got. So I was very sad when I finished the package. I went to get more and they were all gone. I hope Walmart stocks some more soon.

Annie Chun's Roasted Seaweed Snacks: Sesame flavored

Yum, seaweed sheet.

Sweetheart Vox Box from Influenster

I discovered influenster from another blogger. It's a review website that, if you're lucky, will send you products to test and review. You need to fill out a survey to get invited to join but it seems that you just need to show you're interested in sharing your opinion and use multiple social networks. 

I signed up and couldn't figure the site out right away but I got it after a week and shortly afterwords they announced the Sweetheart Vox Box for Valentine's. I qualified, took the survey, and got approved to get the Vox Box. So here it is, all sorts of magical things. 

Sweetheart Vox Box courtesy of influenster.

Here are the products I recieved to test:

Olay® Fresh Effects Powered Contour Cleansing System
Secret Clinical Strength deodorant
Not Your Mother's® Beach Babe Texturizing Sea Salt Spray (Super excited about this one)
SkinnyGirl Daily On-the-Go Bar

I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.

Library, Museum, or Zoo?

If you were forced to spend the rest of your life in a library,
a museum or a zoo, which would you choose and why?

One of my friends shared this on facebook this morning. My friend chose Zoo. I chose library. I could start at one end and work my way through all of the books. By the time I had read them all I could start over the books would feel like new again.

Which would you choose and why.

Valentine's Day (Put Chocolate on Things)

I was busy for pretty much all of Valentine's day so I wasn't planning on doing anything with Josh. We had both bought each other things so it really wasn't a big deal. We can go on a date anytime so it wasn't important to have one on February 14. Suzannah had the idea that we should put chocolate on things. Everyone agreed and that became the plan.

We all brought things we wanted to put chocolate on and we used Suzannah's personal crockpot to heat up the chocolate. It worked really well. We had pretzels, chips, fruit, cheese, french fries, and popcorn chicken. We watched the movie Pitch Perfect and it was a fun night. 

Valentine's Day spread. 

Suzannah made cards for everyone that were themed for their preferences. I got a Doctor Who one. Jess got a Daily Grace one Josh got one with no relation to Valentine's (because he doesn't like Valentine's Day). 

Daleks will exterminate you.
No matter how much you love them.

Lunch Date

I was bored after class and decide to take myself on a lunch date to Arbys. I'm not a huge Arbys fan but I like their curly fries and their chicken sandwiches aren't terrible. Also it's located between the school and my apartment.

I made some rules for myself. No cell phone, no iPod. Just me and my lunch. I decided to try different dipping sauces for my fries, because they had a lot of choices. There's normal ketchup. Some spicy sauce that reminds me of the hot sauce they have at Famous Daves (or at least I think that's where I remember it from), and some honey mustard. I'm not a huge fan of honey mustard even though Josh makes me keep trying it. This one wasn't too bad and I ended up eating more of that than ketchup. I'm proud of myself.

It was a fun date. I'll have to do it again sometime.

Plowing the Parking Lot

After it snows a certain amount everyone in my building has to move their car out of the lot so it can get plowed. This means I need to move my bug. Last time we were able to just push it, but this time it was parked in a couple inches of ice. Luckily I still had my tow rope so we just hooked it up and Josh pulled it out of the ice and we pushed it into a parking spot along the side of the road.

Louis parked on the side of the road. 

Where the front tire was stuck in the ice. 

Marshall "Blizzard"

It started out as an average Minnesota snowfall. Everyone on facebook was freaking out and saying school should get cancelled for Monday and this is all I saw outside the window of my apartment. 

Outside my apartment at 8:34 am.

 We did get more snow as the day wore on and I was not super thrilled about having to go to work.

Outside my apartment at 11:07 am. 

Outside my apartment at 1:33 pm.

 I went to work like a good employee. I even made it home on my lunch break even though I should have just stayed there. But coming home at 11:30 at night was a different story. I took the highway like I always do but was unable to make the turn off it. I figured I could keep going and take the next turn, no such luck. I fished-tailed for quite a bit before spinning into the ditch.

Stuck in the ditch at 11:36 pm.

I had the snow shovel with me and tried to dig the car out but it was too far in the ditch, and as we've seen before Josh's car is not a fan of the snow. So I called him and Chris to come help me but we couldn't get it out. So we just left it there for the night. 

I then paid $120 to get it towed out this morning. Next time I'm just going to pay a bunch of my friends to get it out. If I paid ten of my friends $10 it would still be cheaper and we would definitely be able to get it out. 

Yep, That's My Face

I don't wear makeup very often. My mother never wore makeup and so I never learned. I'm slowly figuring it out. But I came to a conclusion yesterday. I'm really only ever willing to wear makeup if my hair looks nice. If my hair doesn't look nice then what's the point? So yeah. My hair looked nice so I put some makeup on. Not that you can tell in the pictures I took in my kitchen under a fluorescent light with my iPod but that's okay.

Something Mushy

Josh and I made a deal for Valentine's day. (Because he hates it and I just like candy wrapped in pink). Each of us spends $20 on the other person for whatever they want. He chose a Skyrim expansion... or something and I had him buy me flowers and chocolate. I think it's a pretty good deal. I'm happy with it.

Also the place he got the flowers from said they came with a free card. He didn't know what to write on it and the lady working there told him he should probably write something mushy. So he told her to write that. "Something mushy." Pretty funny.

I Have Made a Terrible Mistake

There is a square courtyard at my school that has the student center on one side, the PE building on another, the fine arts building on the other side and a building called Bellows Academic directly across from the student center which connects to the other academic buildings.

There's a sidewalk that goes around the outside of a grassy.area and connects the buildings. There is also a brick path running down the center.

I've made a terrible mistake.

Wintertime

This is my winter look. I have scarves to match my sweatshirts.

Parallel Parking

When I took my driver's test I decided that as long as I was good at everything else I could fail in the parallel parking section. I aced 90 degree backing and failed parallel parking. I was about a foot and a half from the curb and told the guy that's all the further I was going. I passed my test and haven't thought about it since.

I live off campus this semester and walk to school when it's nice out. But since winter hit I've been driving Josh's car and catching rides. There's a street near the school that students can park on without permits. But if you get there at the wrong time of day it's hard to find a space.

So I parallel parked successfully for the first time ever. It's no super impressive because it was a large space I was backing into but I did it.

I Can't Remember How To Fall Asleep

Josh and I have been dating for over 2 and a half years, and somehow I still have trouble getting to sleep when we share the same bed. This is especially odd since we've been living together since the middle of August.

It's not that I'm uncomfortable, or the bed is too small, or he snores too loud, or he steals the blankets or anything like that. I just can't get to sleep very easily. I fall asleep eventually and sleep pretty well.

Josh and I were talking about this tonight and it's funny because I can fall asleep pretty much anywhere at any time. I can sleep sitting up, leaning at awkward, uncomfortable angles, or in the middle of a brightly lit room. Just not in bed when he is also in the bed.

I am in fact typing this because I can't get to sleep. My iPod is my alarm so I keep it under my pillow. But it also means I can do stuff on it when I can't get to sleep. Josh falls asleep in less than fives minutes and is out cold. So as long as the light isn't too bright he won't wake up. I also generally hide under the blanket so that doesn't happen.